Transcript: Dorothy Hobson Date: 4 August 2013 [0:00:00] Thanks a lot. Okay, pleasure. I just wanted to start really with a general question about what brought you to the centre, and when that was? Well I did English at Birmingham in the English department, and in the third year you could do a course which was called Contemporary Cultural Studies, which I followed that course. Immediately I was doing it, some of the people at the centre discovered, because I did my project on a working class estate in Kings Norton, and they almost suggested to me, oh this is really interesting, would you like to And almost suggested that I could apply That would have been? I left English in 75, so went to English at 72 to 75, and then went to the centre in the September 75. Right. And can you remember anything about the atmosphere there, when you arrived? Had you heard anything about the centre before? Well the thing was of course I knew them, it s a bit different. Because I had been doing the undergraduate course, some of the people there I actually knew, because they had probably taught us for seminars. Another connection I had was that I was doing research on this estate in Kings Norton for my undergraduate dissertation, and Andrew Tolson needed to meet some working class men, so I was asked if I could take him to introduce him to some working class men, who were the husbands, and they were husbands then mainly, of the women I was interviewing. Although I was doing couples anyway, my undergraduate work was about It was challenging the Embourgeoisement Thesis, and saying that in fact, people were still working class, even though they were living in new council houses and all that, so I was interviewing couples, and talking about leisure and everything, but he needed to meet working class men to do his own study. So I sort of knew quite a lot about them before I went there, because I remember Stuart saying to me, almost like telling me people to chat to when they came, who needed to meet new people and talk about things. So I probably didn t experience the alienation perhaps, in the same way that other people coming there new, because it wasn t strange to me. I knew the university, I knew everywhere, so it was a little bit different. What was your interest in doing that original research though, In Kings Norton? Why were you interested in doing that? I don t know really. I was really interested in English, and in fact it was debateable whether I did go to the centre or whether I did a Ph.D. with David Lodge about 1930s working class authors, and I didn t know which one I was going to do, and then I decided on the centre, I suppose because I knew about it, because it was part of my own background, and because although I didn t live on that estate, I lived the other side of the main road in the middle class houses, but my son went to school on that estate, so I knew a lot of people there, just from being a mum at the school basically. You stand at the school gate and you just know everybody from that really. So I did know about it. I knew when we first were looking at the uses of literacy, a lot of that was part of what I knew, not from reading, but from part of what was my background, so in that sense, it was not a revelation. And I also I had done some other work, I d discovered that I was very good at, not very good but I could do interviews. I d done some interviews for another undergraduate course that I did, where I had been and interviewed doctors and health visitors about contraception, and I d won a prize for Dorothy Hobson 04 August 2013Dorothy Hobson Page 1 of 8
that, so I kind of must have realised that this was something I could do, and it was an area I was interested in following. That move in between that early period, between English and then Cultural Studies, operating in that grey area if you like, were there any differences that struck you between the way intellectual work was carried out at the centre and the way intellectual work was carried out in the English department? I suppose it was just because the English department, although there was some things like Michael Green spanned the two departments at that time, but the English was much more traditional lecturing, a big lecture theatre, which was very You did, you had seminars so it was a bit different. I suppose the other thing was I had gone to King Edward s Camp Hill girls school, so I d gone to, and although you don t know what you re doing when you re doing it [Laughs] I had gone to a very conventional aca, you know high end academic school where you did Latin and Greek, so it didn t feel like The English department was much more natural to me than actually going to the centre, which was not the way that I had been taught at school or I d learnt to learn, so it was a bit strange in that sense. How was learning carried out at the centre? [Laughs]. I always remember once saying As you know there was the theory seminar, which you sat in and you I mean, particularly if you d done English, you hadn t done politics, you hadn t done any of that, you know, Marxism or any of that, and I was not political in that sense. I was steeped in the Labour party, and in working class My grandfather was a miner, so I was steeped in working class Labour tradition. You know, all those beliefs that that was what it was about. But Marxism was not part of it, theoretical elements were not, so you would sit there and you sort of wouldn t particularly understand. I remember saying once, I think that eventually the way you learnt things at the centre was through osmosis. If you sat there and listened, you would at some point realise that you did understand, and so it was very different and then the sub groups But because I was not doing the taught MA, the theory seminars were not the vital thing for me, because that was not what I was going to be tested on to get my MA. I was always doing the thesis, so I was always doing that as background, and going out and doing my own research, and my own interviews, and then of course you had the sub groups, which you chose which you went to, and I was in the Media group which was, Stuart was mainly leading that with Ian Connell, Charlotte, myself, and I won t be able to remember everybody but those were the main people I remember. Then I was also in the Women s group, which had a lot of us in there, and then I was also in a group which was called the Work group, which was Paul Willis and a number of other people Richard Johnson? Richard? No, I was never in a group with Richard, because Richard came a little bit later as well, but Richard was History, so I was never in a group of Richard s, not even particularly in a group with Michael. The main group was Stuart, or else we didn t have a member of staff in the Women s group, and the Work group was Paul Willis who was a research fellow at the time, so he was the leading academic person in that group. How did the sub groups relate to each other, and also to the general theory seminar? I don t know how they related to the general theory, because the general theory seminar, again in retrospect I would imagine that they had to, if that was what it was like, now in academia you have to say exactly what you re going to do, so I m assuming that the teaching staff had to say This is where we will be doing the academic teaching, but I m only surmising that, but I would think So that was quite structured, it was proper lectures and I think I ve given you some of my own notes from those lectures, so And the sub groups, I don t know how they did relate to the theory group. They were all pursuing You were in groups pursuing areas of interest to yourself, and then we did have external academics and researchers who came to certain groups, particularly the group, like the heavy group was a group called the State group, which was Stuart and John Clarke, and people would come from that, and again I won t be able to remember their names, but Stan Cohen, and other People who were already published and were kind of what, we in the Women s theory Dorothy HobsonDorothy Hobson Page 2 of 8
used to joke a bit, it s the heavy, and the joke was their group finished They finished as we started, and so there was always And a couple of people from the, like Ian, who was in the Media group, there would be a little bit of friction, like when is the State group going to finish because we are scheduled to be starting now, and all that sort of thing. But there wasn t a lot of overlapping, as I think of it. Even though I was in two or three groups And then people, of course different groups worked on different books that were published eventually. Can you remember anything about the motivation for establishing the Women s Studies group? That was a time when I suppose the intake that was my year had quite a lot of women come in at that point. There was myself, Charlotte, Jani no, Janice (Inaudible 00:11:01) was already there, Eve Brook, a woman called Pam Taylor who was a historian who wrote some very interesting work about women in service, but she was more, worked with Richard. Lucy Bland, Hazel Dowling, so it was sort of It was of that moment, because there were certain academic books that had been published that were there to be looked at, you know, Sheila Rowbotham, and There were four or five, whose names have gone out of my head at the moment, but four or five big women s books that were to be looked at, and it was the moment of establishing a women s group, and then that turned into that first book Women Take Issue. Was there a sense that before that they weren t really dealing with you know feminism, taking it seriously? I don t think they were, because it was I don t know how much it was happening, it was obviously happening in some places for these books to have been published, but the people who went into the Women s Studies group were from different areas of interest anyway. It wasn t like people in the State, or people in the History group who were interested in because we were all doing different things. Some people were doing English, some people like myself doing ethnographic research, some people were straight media, so it was much more, the kind of beginning of something that was a new academic discipline in that sense, you know being informed within the centre. So it was quite, I don t know that it was controversial. It was but it was about how much people were taking it seriously and what were the heavy groups and what were the not heavy groups Another group we had which I can t remember, maybe it was the same(?) group, but it was much more a group where discussion, a big general seminar General seminar Yeah, so it was, was that after they taught? I seem to remember it was after they taught the MA theory group on a Monday morning, it was after that there would be a meeting where a lot of discussion, and might have had bits of conflict going on there [Laughs]. Can you remember anything about the reaction of the (Inaudible 00:13:39) centre when the women s group was established? I can t remember really. You see the difference for me, because I was already married and I had a small child, I had another completely separate life, so I could not be at things late. I could not go to the endless, where groups would spin over into endless discussion. I had had to go back to pick my son up from school at that time. So whether things went on then, and I didn t live in Kings (Inaudible 00:14:30) where everybody lived, you know in the same sort of area. So when I did go to social things, I went to parties and all that sort of thing, that kind of extension of the working day when things might have gone on, I didn t really go to. But there obviously were conflicts going on, but I suppose I didn t have, couldn t get involved really in those sort of things, because I d got And there were Some other people had got children. Liam Connell had his young sons, who were about the same age as my son. I don t think there was many more. Stuart and Kath had their children but again it was a bit different, so I don t really remember a lot. The conflict came at a more huge intellectual level in terms of the big debate between Marxism and Feminism, whether Feminism should have equal theoretical weight with Marxism, which Stuart had always maintained that he could not accept. He could only accept that Marxism was paramount, which I agreed with, having been part of that, not part of that theoretical background, but more of an understanding of that perhaps, that seemed to be the main struggle, which was a struggle that they were theorizing Dorothy HobsonDorothy Hobson Page 3 of 8
in that sense. So there was debates, there was conflict about that, which I didn t feel and didn t I mean Stuart s world to me was miles away from the people I was studying and writing about, which at first, for my MA, was about these young women in working class backgrounds, and their relationship to work and leisure, which was much more a parallel study, set out to be of Paul Willis Learning to Labour, so he was how working class boys get working class jobs, my thesis was how working class girls become, you know move into motherhood, so it was much more about that really, so it was a combination of, Stuart was always my supervisor but intellectually and academically, I was working with Paul s ideas in that sense, until I went on to start doing my research for my Ph.D., which moved into the Media area, which was And that was a result of things that came out organically of what the women told me, because I had this question, which was, what did they do, and what did they watch, and they identified whole areas that they didn t watch, but they thought was important. Like they didn t watch the news, they didn t watch documentaries, they didn t watch war films, but it was not through apathy or not interested, it was because they felt an absolute sense that nothing changed, which of course you could say now. The news just reports it, and gets off on its own interest in that, but they found that so shocking that they had to reject it and they watched But they recognized that was very important, and they said I know I should watch it, but I just can t bear to see what s reported, so they liked more popular programmes. That s how I got into looking at those programmes. You ve talked about the background that you came from, and that you were out in the field talking to ordinary people. Did you feel in a sense that you were slightly on the outside of the centre project then, or did you find that fitted in perfectly? Was that project Not really. I realised that I was actually more in the project they would like to be doing than maybe they were, and I always remember asking someone how I could insert real theory into my work, and he said, you don t need to insert theory into your work, you are writing new theory. What you re doing is actually is like new theory that you re developing, so don t think you ve got to add these little bits in, and so I didn t really feel that. Again, at the time you don t It s only in retrospect that anything really gets put into place, and I ve realised much more that it was my experience at school, which gave you this unbelievable education, which you didn t even realise when you re having it, and then taking that to the centre, you then had the same There weren t many people there who were Oxbridge, so they hadn t had particularly that same education, they didn t have And English of course again gives you that, so you didn t really feel, well I certainly didn t, I don t know whether, you know But I didn t feel not part of it at all. What was the process of group work like? You ve talked about Women Take Issue and that was obviously jointly authored. What was that like in practice? Well, I m not good at joint work. I do my own thing and write my own But that was interesting because although it was jointly authored, but we wrote our own sections, so I can t remember what my chapter in Women Take Issue is, it s one of the ones of the women. But we did do a piece, which I think was about the equal pay act, which was collective, but it was still, as far as I was concerned, I still wrote my section, and took it to the meetings, where you had, you know we would meet at somebody s, one of the group s houses, and talk about little different bits, but for the most part people were still doing, they were doing their own sections, and then some of it would be done. But you know, collective in the sense It wasn t collective in the sense of when you see Say you see American drama writers in a group collectively putting in, and you see them writing a line, and somebody says It was not collective in that sense. There were collective readings I think, where people would read something and then do almost like a seminar on it, but some of the other groups might have been very different. But certainly I know that I m not good, well I won t say I m not good because I ve never tried it, I ve always got to be doing, because for one thing I can only work at home in my own study and that s always the way that I ve done it. But some of the groups I think were, and that would be the ones where there would have been huge intellectual conflicts, and epistemological breaks at some point in whatever, but that was not really part of the groups that I was involved with. What about the politics in the sense and more broadly, like you ve talked a little bit feminism, but do you have any recollections of the kind of politics, I mean, did politics seep into the everyday life at the centre? If so, in what ways? Dorothy HobsonDorothy Hobson Page 4 of 8
It was a very political place really, because it was I don t know How did your, like You mentioned that your family are steeped in the Labour movement, but then a lot of the From what, I ve been speaking to other people, and read elsewhere that a lot of the class based politics within the centre are more based around, you know, even more radical kind of big flame and Exactly, yes You know, IMG(?) and did you like get into any of that or? No, because I think I had been brought up so politically, so I did have this kind of steeped in what was the Labour movement, and the working class movement. I can remember having debates about whether you believed in revolution or gradualism, and it was clear to me that I always believed in gradualism. I remember somebody outside the centre, somebody at, um, down at when we were doing Screen, I was on one of there, I don t know why I was asked to become a board member of Screen Education, but I can remember somebody said to me, well of course Dorothy you wouldn t think that, because you are a liberal humanist. And I said well, yeah, I m quite happy to be [laughs] to be seen as that, as before you wouldn t be happy to be a liberal. But I suppose because I couldn t see, I didn t see it ever being successful or being something which would you know work that way. But then I went to I remember going to a I can t remember which of the radical feminist conferences, which was held in Birmingham, where there were radical feminists with scissors round their necks, ready to deal with But again, I just thought this is just theoretical, it s just a symbol of what was going on, but again I was sort of I suppose it did affect, because I would have asked people, people said but remember you are working with the, you re working with the people who all this debate is about. The fact that your research is talking to women who are living oppression and talking to you and you re giving them a voice is your political action anyway. So I certainly was never part of any of that really, and I suppose the women s group, we did look at a lot of those journals like And it is quite interesting that some of the names from those things then become, you know very smart, straight politicians. I think, is it Hilary Wainwright, is one of the leading left of one of those journals, and then she s been I ve seen her and she s been a very straight (Inaudible 00:25:47) Labour party probably politician, so people did move into those areas, so it was And I suppose that was the good thing about the centre, it was not, I would say it was not oppressive in that sense that you had got what you realised was actually a very diverse group of people. And I suppose again that you were There was a great respect for other people s intellectual abilities so that was It was never the case, which you can be a little bit if you re judging people in the real world, think, right, they re just stupid, don t understand the real world But there was not that, because everybody knew that everybody had a political commitment but an intellectual capability that would back up what they were saying in that sense. It was such a unique, and again you don t realise, it was so unique in the sense that Stuart was the leader, but he took no glory, he did not... You know he published, that was the whole point, we published books long before anybody at our status would have published, so the books like Women Take, um, Culture, Media, Language, which I was an editor of, and that It s amazing when you think that was done, and we all had chapters in it, and it became, you know it became such a famous book. And that was because Stuart obviously completely believed in what was the project, and actually lived it and let everyone do what he knew they were capable of, and I think that is probably the essence of what happened at the centre, but again you don t realise how much that doesn t happen anywhere, and that was what unique about him, and his attitude to what was being done there. Having said all that, because obviously the centre did have the emphasis on breaking down convention and barriers between the staff, you know lecturers and students, so did you feel that you had ownership over the cultural studies project, as a student? Yes, because you actually did feel You didn t feel that you was in that sense you know, you didn t feel particularly But you were a student in that way, you obviously were, but that was something that certainly, well certainly you can only speak for yourself, I don t know if other people may have experienced it different, because they might have wanted things differently, you know I probably was not that concerned about the overall project, although I suppose I was, I didn t feel that there Dorothy HobsonDorothy Hobson Page 5 of 8
was anything that I could not do. And then when I went on to do, to move, you know when I did the Crossroads book, and then moved on to do the Channel 4 project, I was asked to do that because of having come from the centre, and because of that collective experience there, which I think you don t get in many places, but again you don t know because you ve only experienced that really. What was the influence of the staff members and how important were they? I don t know how [Laughs] You mentioned Stuart was the leader, is that how people saw it If you take it in conventional management terms, he had to be, because he would have been paid as the director, I think he was called then. Some people didn t like it, and again a lot of the But I don t I didn t feel it, I didn t feel that tension really but some people may have felt it, but then you can only say what you felt yourself. I think in the, obviously at the end when Stuart left it was, you know there was a lot of tension, particularly But I know particularly that some of the women did not like the way things were going, however, what about There were a lot more men there, where were they in the argument. I don t know really. But I think Stuart going was also a mix of that big pull of the OU where he could be talking to hundreds of students, thousands of students, as opposed to quite a small number I suppose at the centre. And it is interesting now, again when you look at how that moment was clearly a special moment, with certain of the people there, and things that developed from there, and what had become the next established part of academia, which again you don t know at the time that it s happening really. Was there ever like What was the motivation behind getting all these books and all these stencil papers and journal articles out there, because I mean, was there ever kind of an atmosphere of, we re doing these because we want to become professors, or was it something else? It was very different then, I mean the way now in academia, you know everything is about publishing works for whatever the REF The REF as it is at the moment, which to me is like absolute madness really. It was not like that. There was no pressure, there was not a pressure really to do with, I mean, Working Papers was already established before I went there, and I d never, never wrote one. I don t know why, because I just got straight into doing my MA and then into the other work, but I think what happened was... I can t remember how we got the publishing contract with Hutchinson. I remember I had to be [Laughs] It was worse for outside organisations Hutchinson s could not deal with a collective in terms of editorial. I remember I had to be like the focus point for the meetings with Hutchinson about Women Take Issue, because I just said no, we can t do collectives, so I remember to my great pleasure that I picked the picture for the cover of Culture, Media, Language, because they had a lot and I looked and said That s perfect. I don t know who got that first contract, but suddenly there were five or six books to be written, and each group just worked on it, but somebody must have made that initial, unless Hutchinson approached us. I don t know, because they were I remember once being at a conference and somebody, one of the editors from Hutchinson took me and somebody else out to lunch and said, Don t worry, Culture, Media, Language has made Hutchinson, because it became, it was like academic best seller round the world really. It was a real breakthrough, and they did about five of them about The Empire Strikes Back Resistance Through Rituals - Resistance Through Rituals, yes. And so each group worked on that, but that was not a huge pressure thing, except to finish on time, but like with all academic publishing as it was, I don t think it is now because of the REF, but there was not the great tension to finish things, they just expected they would come and go, so that was And so it was easier, again you realise in retrospect that was The fact that you became a published author so early, as you know the hardest thing is to get your first book, but because you had got that, and so the publishers knew Dorothy HobsonDorothy Hobson Page 6 of 8
you could write, it was obviously nothing like as hard if you could write, to do the next, to get a contract anyway. But there was obviously this great big emphasis placed on this sort of grandiose(?) notion of like an organic intellectual. Is that how you saw yourself? No. I still don t really know particularly what that would mean. If you said to me, are you now an organic intellectual [Laughs], well I don t You tell me. That s for you to say. [Laughs]. Did you think it was important to have a relationship with the outside world? Obviously your research was based with what involved working with ordinary people, whether it was on housewives in Kings Norton, or people watching Crossroads TV a bit later on. Was that an important part of the process to you? Yes, because I have scant regard for theory in its own Unless it can then be applied, so I would only see it as being something that can be tested, so empirical research and talking to people, and that s gone through all my work. It s not just been working class women. It has been television producers and heads, as I ve gone on to do the work for Channel 4, where I ve interviewed the chief executives of probably every television company in the country, but I still feel that they I still feel that is important, because unless you can ask people, and you know what they think, you re just basically making it up. And in the same way that I don t hardly name people, like all those women s names were made up in case anybody read them and recognized them, unless somebody s saying something that s not contentious, if they re saying something that is contentious, even if they are the chief executive of somewhere, I will not name them because I feel that it s like a bond between You may ask somebody to interview them to start with, and they think this is a professional, but if you re good at it, if you re good at interviewing people relax and tell you things that they might think, I wish I d never told them that. So they ve got to have the confidence that you re not going to then write something, which is why I know I could never have been a journalist. And that is the difference between, I could write features but I could never ask somebody something and then expose it, because I think well that s not I have always thought that that s what work has to be, and still do. You can write the very latest, work I m doing where I still feel unless I m talking to people and asking them what they think So I suppose if you took a theoretical position, Stuart s encoding and decoding, and going to a negotiated reading, I think you can apply that too, because a negotiated reading is also peoples understanding of their own situation, which you can t know unless they tell you, and then hopefully that s when you use the theory to interpret what they ve told you. Just to finish off then, I was going to ask, what do you think were the particular structures of the period, or the conjuncture if you like that made the centre in the way that it operated possible, whilst you were there? I think it was a moment that was of a certain time. The sixties had happened, so you have to look at it historically, and how things had changed in the sixties, and how these theories had developed, but life had changed, and suddenly, suddenly there was a different culture to study, because if you look at pre the you know if you look at the fifties, there is no, hardly, difference between young people and their parents, or even their, people older That youth culture had become to happen in the sixties, so they ve got one thing going. Feminism had start women had become freer, because of the pill, again in the sixties. Clothes, you know simple things like clothes had changed. Then you d gone through other periods like the hippie period, all that so the seventies had suddenly got all this culture that it could study as well. The centre was so special because I can remember it as like music, but parties were about dancing and music and you know It was the difference between, you know, you listened to the Bee Gees, and you listened to Elton John and all those people, and if you were brave enough, like if I was to say that you thought Abba were good, that was, now of course Abba have been one of the groups, bands that it s okay to have thought were good anyway. So although there was a lot of intellectual and probably personal angst went on, there was, but there was also a lot of dancing, a lot of music, a lot of parties where music was very important. And the centre was at the, and again it was only when you went outside to the conferences and you saw the power of Stuart making, and I ve learned from Stuart, going to conferences with him and watching him let people change, make the debates, make the Dorothy HobsonDorothy Hobson Page 7 of 8
arguments, and then he would come in either with something that was just so brilliant that pulled it all together, but demolished it as well. And I have learned to do that a little bit, and to think, don t talk too soon, and it s something I have to remind myself not to intervene too soon, wait two(?) moments, so he had that I always feel that Stuart was, had a charisma which, meant in the best sense of the word, because some people thought he was wonderful, some people found him very difficult, but I think either way, people either responded because they wanted to work to his strengths, and his abilities. Or they wanted to work to prove him wrong. Either way, the dynamic was there, and I feel that he was, but equally then when Richard came along, Richard was a very stable, different sense of strength, as was Michael, for other people, who maybe didn t feel that, um Well I think everybody felt it, you had to feel it because he was And the centre was a power within the university, again I always remember, I was admitted to the English department by an old English professor, in the sense of Baer Wolfe(?) old English, called Geoffrey Shepherd, and he admitted me to the English department. And I said to him once, why, when Stuart was having difficulties with the university hierarchy, and I said why don t they realise what a brilliant person they ve got, and he said, you re so naïve, that the university structures don t happen like that, of course they realised how good he is, but he could disrupt The centre could disrupt everything and it s brilliant, but they haven t got quite the confidence to let it carry on as well as it did, so I do think he was It was of that moment, and that special moment I suppose the beginning of the seventies to the... is like the golden moment really, I would I m assuming of course a lot of work s been done since, but those are the points when And I suppose if you re at the beginning, of course you re going to make the breakthroughs because that s the nature of beginning something, but it was I only remember it as completely happy time really, and comple And also, again in retrospect, when you go back out into the real world, which I went in to doing research for my Channel 4 research, and another work I ve done, the centre had a standing, so you were respected from having come from there, from, you know, London, you know people who weren t academics but were part of the intellectual scene in that sense, it was respected from everywhere, which again you don t know when you re there, and a lot of this you only kind of know afterwards, because you re just getting on and doing it. Were there similarities between the atmosphere at the centre and then at Channel 4? I have never been anywhere so much like a centre seminar than the Channel 4 programme review meeting [Laughs], because the first time I went in and sat there, you know, and I m introduced to the people in there, but it was just exactly like that, intellectual debate, different positions going on, people, Michael Custer who had been at the ICA, and other people from all sorts. But there was only really one person at Channel 4 who was not of the same political perspective as the centre, so it was exactly like it I felt, and I was expected to contribute on that same level, it was very much like that, and remember Stuart had been to university with Jeremy Isaacs, they are of that same age group, so there are There are other people, again that I ve met through the media, who are part of that, what was obviously Stuart s influences as well, at Oxford, in that particular So I do think there are specific conjunctures when things come together and then something happens at that moment. And that was a special moment really over there. That was what it was like. Well Dorothy, thanks very much. Thanks. Thank you. [End of Transcript] Dorothy HobsonDorothy Hobson Page 8 of 8